Apple has become one of the first Big Tech companies to explicitly call out and ban caste discrimination in the company.
Other firms such as Amazon, Dell, Meta, Microsoft, and Google do not specifically and explicitly reference caste in their main global policy.
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Training employees
The idea of caste which is well-known to people in India would be a foreign concept to managers and employees in the US.
Hence Apple has also started training on the topic so that its workers understand the new policies better.
The new policy sits alongside existing codes that strictly prohibit discrimination against race, religion, gender, age, and ancestry.
Lawsuit against higher caste seniors
Apple had updated its general employee conduct policy to include caste in June 2020 when California’s employment regulator sued Cisco Systems on behalf of a low-caste engineer who accused two higher-caste seniors of stalling his career.
This was the first US employment lawsuit against alleged casteism and pushed major tech players to include caste as another basis of discrimination.
Other companies that acknowledge caste
IBM also seemingly updated its policy to include anti-casteism rules and it is training its managers on the topic of caste.
Platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have caste protection under their moderation guidelines.
Users will be able to report a discriminatory tweet or post and be able to select that it was casteist in nature.
Google cancels talk by Dalit presenter
Silicon Valley recently came face to face with the topic of caste and alleged caste discrimination among tech workers who have Indian heritage.
Back in June, Google, whose CEO Sundar Pichai has Indian roots, cancelled a talk on caste discrimination where Dalit rights activist Thenmozhi Soundararajan was supposed to give a presentation.
The talk was organised by Google employee Tanuja Gupta.
Hindu majority pushes back
It eventually emerged that Google cancelled the talk because it was leading to rancor inside the company, with people calling Soundararajan “Hindu-phobic” and “anti-Hindu”.
After the cancellation Tanuja was put under investigation allegedly for violating the company’s code of conduct.
Harassment campaign
She said that several emails were sent to her VP, the head of HR, the chief diversity officer, and to the CEO directly, claiming that the talk was creating a hostile workplace.
Other allegations included making people feel unsafe, that the speaker was not qualified to speak on the topic and several more.
Soon after the incident, she left Google.